Bad Ash
Unregistered User
I was a bit tipsy last night, so probably didn't explain things too well. Butf or your own training is where the power meter should come into its element because the readings should be consistent. Therefore if one ride has more power than another that means you are producing more power. And if you are going quicker for a lower (or equal) power then there has been an improvement in the conditions (though narrowing it down to what exactly has improved could be hard). I've been reading a time trialling forum and some of the blokes on there take their testing very seriously; repeating the same loop many times in similar weather conditions and making tiny alterations to their setup.
Comparing power readings from different sources is less useful because the readings are much less likely to be consistent. Over the winter I do a spinning/rpm class and the bikes haves 'power' reading, however that figure only really means anything in one class on the one bike as the calibration of the readings differ so much. E.g. In one class I might have to really put the hammer down to get close to '300w' and in others I'm spinning '300w' in the warmup. However once I've used a bike for a few minutes I can adjust my scale (or more likely hop on another bike which tells me I'm producing much more power). If I used the same bike for every class then it'd be different and I could probably compare my efforts between classes.
And then I end up with a leak at the edge where I've tried to peel it off 
